How many years have you spent dreaming about flying in the sky only to awake on the back seat of a bus? Have you ever expressed your dreams to someone and they mocked you? Have you ever straddled that line that divides sanity from failure? Has the world fallen in on you, and you climb from underneath the rubble to see that everyone has gone and left you for dead?
The moments in life create fertile soil within your soul. The desires and dreams all stem from nightmares and starvation, that if seen as a glass half full; can produce amazing results. This is my story of HAMteam Huntsville.
Like every adult post college graduation, I lived an ordinary life. I woke up, kissed my family, and then went to work. I slugged through the day following protocol after protocol. Then I came home and watched TV with my family. I made really good money while being a handle that someone else pulled for their own financial gain. Then one day the strangest thing happened. While pumping gas on my way home, I received a call from a parent whose child I coached ten years prior while I was working at a youth center. She asked if I would consider returning to coach her daughter who was now in high school. Understanding the demands of taking on such a thing; coupled with the fear of more kids wanting to train, I took on the task. And just as I thought kids here and there began asking to train because they were out on the track with their parents. Before the week was out, I had a track full of kids.
So I began working behind the scenes training kids so that they can compete at their high school on the State Level. And it was fun. Ten percent of my daily labor would go to training. And the rest to my job.
Then disaster struck. I was laid off from my job. I lost EVERYTHING. I wanted to quit coaching. Hell, I wanted to quit life. I went from supporting my family and buying equipment and uniforms to sleeping on a blow up mattress in the living room of my baby sisters one bedroom, one bathroom apartment. It was there that failure found me. It was there that friends mocked me. It was there that my sanity was tested, and all that I wanted to do was go away.
But then I received a text message from the youngest member of my group of kids, Jayleisha McHenry. In the text she asked about practice. My response was to tell her to, "fall back for a bit." And her response, which was her response every time that I said that to her, "fall forward" made me laugh out loud. At practice she worked her butt off. And I didn't realize that HAMteam was born. I returned to my sister's apartment (she wasn't home), put my clothes in the washer and slid down the wall by the bathroom reflecting on my life. There in the dark, against the wall separating me from the bathroom, I realized that I believed in Jayleisha McHenry. I believed in an idea called Human Athletic Movement or HAMteam. And that I had absolutely NOTHING TO LOSE. WHICH MEANT I HAD EVERYTHING TO GAIN.
Jayleisha and many others went on to do amazing things. This website, was established through her connections.
This HAMteam thing really isn't about strength and conditioning, (which is what we do), It isn't about summer track and indoor work; But It's about the family that was born alongside Jay and hers. And if she and her family could still be here through my trials, then I knew I could be there for all of my kids through whatever trials that they faced. Because we are loyal. ALL OF US.
Before any thing, We are family. We are HAMteam.
